


Those Dark, Haunted Eyes

by DinosaurTheology



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Late Night Conversations, Relationship(s), Short & Sweet, Sweet, Television Watching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-15 22:58:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11815932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DinosaurTheology/pseuds/DinosaurTheology
Summary: She could find the meaning of life in those dark, haunted eyes.





	Those Dark, Haunted Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> So I absolutely love Betty, love Jughead and love them together. Wrote this after hours trying to get to sleep in my bunk. Good times.

Betty could not figure out just why, exactly, her Juggie made her crazy and sane all at the same time. It wasn't like he was the kind of guy who should have really inspired those kinds of feelings in a girl, after all. He spent too much time brooding, for one thing, and for a girl who'd had a crush on Archie Andrews for most of her life that was really saying something. He wasn't tall and broad-shouldered (although he was, she had learned in his wiry arms, deceptively strong) nor did he flash the sweet, self-deprecating smiles that made palpitations spring up in a young woman's heart. His lips were wrought to twist in wryness akin to derision or sink in plump, sullen pouts that begged for a kiss. She was, she hated to admit, often weak enough to give in wholeheartedly to such begging.

 

She asked Roni, one time, what it might have been that drove her so bug freakin nuts about the guy. Roni thought for a long moment and then shrugged. “I dunno,” she finally said. “You can't really predict who's gonna go ga-ga for who, you know? It's not, like, science or something. Love's more... magical.”

 

“Magic,” Betty said. She laughed. “Feels like black magic.”

 

“Now hon,” Roni said, “let's not make racist assumptions. It could be any kind of magic.”

 

Betty almost said something—literally had her mouth open to spit out the words—before the sly smile playing on Roni's lips let her know that it was a joke... even if not a terribly good one. She rolled her eyes. “Ha-ha. Here we are playing the laugh at poor Betty game when I'm pretty much losing my mind over this thing.”

 

“Well,” Roni said, “well... let me think about this for a minute.”

 

“Okay.”

 

She pondered, brow knit in an expression of consternation that appeared both wise and severely cute. “I've got some good news and some bad news.”

 

“What?”

 

“The good news is that I might have figured out what it is about Juggie that makes you get so goofy.”

 

“Okay, then. Spill.”

 

“Well, when I was in New York,” she said, “most of the girls were into super clubby, fun, good time guys. Y'know, disposable studs.”

 

“Right,” she said, “and how does that effect me, exactly?”

 

Roni flapped her small hand. “I'm getting to that.” She returned to a subject to which she had well warmed. “Not all of us were into the disposable studs, though, and none of us were all the time. Sometimes all of us, and some of us nearly always, would fall for these tragic art-boys—the kind who you were just sure were going to grow up to be the next Lou Reed or Jack Kerouac or somebody.”

 

“You burst onto the scene already a legend,” Betty said. “The unwashed phenomenon, the original vagabond, you strayed into my arms.”

 

Roni raised an eyebrow. “You got me, chick. Come again?”

 

“It's a song,” she said. “Old song. Go ahead.”

 

“Oh. Okay, sure. Anyway, that's basically it. You're either going for that type sometimes, now, or you're the type who goes for that type all the time—which I'm thinking you might be since you just came off a years long bender for our favorite ginger and his Tennessee flat-top box.”

 

“That makes as much sense as anything,” Betty said. “So, er... was that the good news or bad news?”

 

“Good news,” Roni said. “Definitely.”

 

“So what's the bad news?”

 

“Knowing kinda-sorta why he makes you crazy isn't gonna make you any less crazy, chick.” When Betty rolled her eyes, Roni said. “And none of this is the important thing, really, you know.”

 

“Then what's the important thing?”

 

“That he makes you crazy period—that somebody does.” She sighed and smiled, a little wistful. “It's an amazing feeling to get all wrapped up in somebody. I want it so bad and feel like I can't find it for the life of me.”

 

She figured it out a few days later sitting on the couch with him, watching TV. Maybe she doesn't get it figured all the way out in the way that you could answer on a game-show or a test at school, or something, but it's the kind of answer that resonates in a deep, bell tone throughout her chest and abdomen.

 

Her feet rested on his lap and he scowled at the documentary that they'd chosen—something on veganism in China and how it was probably the only model for sustainable food culture that should be followed and how it would save the world. “What's bugging you about it?” she asked.

 

“It's kinda stupid,” he said.

 

“What do you mean?” She should have known, on some level, that a documentary about giving up all forms of animal products would not have been extraordinarily popular with her cheeseburger addicted beloved.

 

“Well, the research is bad,” he said. “I mean, they're claiming that this is a study on how the people indigenous to this region eat, right?”

 

“That's the hypothesis, yep.”

 

“Well, they're totally conveniently ignoring a tribe in Mongolia that bases almost their entire diet on wheat, cheese and meat products.”

 

“Not as, like, occasional treats?”

 

“No,” he said, “they totally pig out. Go, just... crazy. And they don't have any health indexes that are particularly lower than the vegan population that these guys are studying, or a shorter lifespan or anything, but since it didn't fit with the narrative that these doctors are trying to put out there—whoops! Gonna just sweep that one under the rug.”

 

“Maybe it was an honest mistake?”

 

He shrugs. “Maybe. I guess I'm just kinda frustrated. I mean, the only options here are that the guys who did this study are stupid—which isn't cool considering that they're doctors—or they're lying and think that we're stupid.”

 

“Those might not be the only options,” she said. “Could be that the tribe only eats that way, like, on holidays and eats a lot more moderately at other times.”

 

“Could be,” he said. “But I'd be a lot more satisfied if they'd actually dug into it a little more and found out, y'know? It's nothing to be ashamed about, being wrong, but being untruthful... that's where we start getting into Stephen Glass territory and I'm pretty sure we all know that we don't want to be there.”

 

“This isn't just about researchers maybe, possibly Stephen Glassing a something about Chinese eating habits, is it?”

 

“No,” he said. “No.”

 

She takes his hand in hers, closes her fingers tight on his. “It's okay. You can tell me.”

 

“It's just,” he says, “it's just that people would be a lot less picky about what they—or anybody else—was eating if they'd ever not been sure where they're next meal was coming from.”

 

She doesn't have anything to say to that so she presses pause on the documentary and curls herself, instead, close to his side. There is no response adequate, nothing she can say that won't seem callous or flippant, so she chooses silence instead. They do say it's golden, right? That's when she looks at him and knows; now, maybe forever she'll find the meaning of life in those dark, haunted eyes.

 


End file.
